Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a type of inter-organizational information system, which permits the automatic and structured communication of data between organizations. Although EDI is used for internal communication, its main application is in facilitating closer collaboration between organizational entities, e.g. suppliers, credit institutions, and transportation carriers. This study illustrates how agent technology can be used to solve real food supply chain inefficiencies and optimise the logistics network. For instance, we explain how agribusiness companies can use agent technology in association with EDI to collect data from retailers, group them into meaningful categories, and then perform different functions. As a result, the distribution chain can be managed more efficiently. Intelligent agents also make available timely data to inventory management resulting in reducing stocks and tied capital. Intelligent agents are adoptive to changes so they are valuable in a dynamic environment where new products or partners have entered into the supply chain. This flexibility gives agent technology a relative advantage which, for pioneer companies, can be a competitive advantage. The study concludes with recommendations and directions for further research

Mangina, Eleni

Vlachos, Ilias

English

Northumbria Research Link

Northumbria Research Link
Citation: Vlachos, Ilias and Mangina, Eleni (2005) EDI and intelligent agents integration to manage 
food chains. In: 3rd International Workshop on Supply Chain Management and Information Systems 
(SCMIS), 6-8 July 2005, Thessaloniki, Greece. 
URL: 
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 1 
Using Intelligent Agents Technology to Manage 
Food Chains 
 
By 
, Ilias P. Vlachos
1*
 , Eleni Mangina
2
 
1: Lecturer, Agricultural University of Athens (AUA) – Greece 
2: Lecturer, University College Of Dublin – Dept. of Computer Science 
 
*: Corresponding Author: Dr. Ilias P. Vlachos 
Agricultural University of Athens, Agricultural Economics Dept., Agribusiness 
Laboratory, Iera Odos 75, Botanikos 118 55, Athens, Greece 
Phone: +30 210 5294757 / Fax: +30 210 5294776 
email: ivlachos@aua.gr   / iliasvlachos@yahoo.co.uk 
 
ABSTRACT 
For consideration for publication in  
3rd International Workshop on Supply Chain Management and Information Systems (SCMIS)  
on 6th - 8th of July 2005 
City Liberal Studies, Thessaloniki, Greece. 
 
 
The European Union (EU 15) is the world's largest producer of food and beverages, with 
combined production estimated (for 2001) at 675 billion Euros. In EU, 30.000 agribusiness 
companies, employing more than 2.800.000 employees, face increasing competition in terms 
of quality, price, and distribution efficiency. Structural changes are occurring in food supply 
chains and new supply designs and configurations are emerging. For example, the food 
industry has witnessed increasing collaboration in distribution. This food logistics re-
engineering focuses upstream on distribution and retail chains. Therefore, automatic stock 
replenishment and deliveries are increasingly becoming the responsibility of producers; for 
example in WalMart (US & UK) & Tesco’s (UK) supply chains.  
Food supply chain re-engineering is facilitated by information technology (IT). The adoption of 
IT tools to optimise business processes.  IT has been used to counter the losses in 
economies performance due to inefficient and inadequate processes in the supply chain 
[Ghisi et al, 2001].  State-of-the-art e-business technologies such as Agent Technology have 
presented encouraging results in fixing supply chain inefficiencies, thus contradicting the ‘IT 
productivity paradox’. 
This paper presents the design of a new intelligent software system that integrates 
information systems developed for relationships between enterprises and the final consumer 
(Business to Consumer or B2C) and between suppliers (Business to Business or B2B). The 
proposed theoretical model uses Agent Technology and will assist both the producing firm 
and the customer to look automatically for an increase in the data exchange rate. 
Agent technology has successfully been used in the past for in managing business 
processes, as described in ADEPT (Advanced Decision Environment for Process Tasks) from 
Jennings [Jennings, 1998]. Based on the functionality of decision making from the company 
managers, the business process involves a combination of judgement and information from 
marketing, sales, research, development, and manufacturing and finance departments. 
Ideally all relevant information should be brought together before judgement is exercised. The 
ADEPT solves problems related to this process by viewing it as a community of negotiating, 
service-providing agents. Each agent represents a distinct role or department and is capable 
of providing one or more services.  
Within this paper the term 'agent' corresponds to the software problem-solving entities, which 
are situated in a particular environment, with specified functions, in order to process the 
inputs received related to the problem domain. The agents have the ability to control their 
internal state and their behaviour, to exhibit flexible problem-solving techniques in pursuit of 
their design objectives. The intelligent agent software system is designed to fulfil the specific 
purpose of analysing the information about the customers that is available currently at the 
retailers’ databases.  
 2 
Usually each software agent is a different specialist, able to accomplish certain tasks, thus 
providing co-operative members in a society. In this work, the scenario of knowledge co-
operation on our study based on Jennings et al. (1992), will illustrate how certain components 
(i.e. food supply agents) can be monitored from a multi-agent software system, by using 
intelligent specialised software agents, which will simulate the procedure of data analysis to 
extract useful information for the relationships between commercial partners. The key aspects 
of this work, based on the previous research in the field [Daskou et Mangina, 2003], are: 
 The identification of possible market relationships has been mapped to a ‘communication’ 
problem where different kinds of agents seek to exchange messages to satisfy and 
interpret data on an on-line basis. 
 The agents are autonomous entities and they either work on their own or co-operate with 
others. 
 Every aspect of the scheduling process (from initial data acquisition to the relationships’ 
interpretation) must be available to the user, in order to understand the internal process of 
the software. 
This study illustrates how agent technology can be used to solve real food supply chain 
inefficiencies and optimise the logistics network, i.e. such as in the case of e-marketplaces. 
For instance, we explain how agribusiness companies can use agent technology to collect 
data from retailers, group them into meaningful categories, and then perform different 
functions. As a result, the distribution chain can be managed more efficiently. Intelligent 
agents also make available timely data to inventory management resulting in reducing stocks 
and tied capital. Intelligent agents are adoptive to changes so they are valuable in a dynamic 
environment where new products or partners have entered into the supply chain. This 
flexibility gives agent technology a relative advantage which, for pioneer companies, can be a 
competitive advantage. The study concludes with recommendations and directions for further 
research.  
 
 
Daskou S. & Mangina E. (2003), ‘Artificial Intelligence in Managing Market Relationships: The 
Use of Intelligent Agents’, International Journal in Relationship Marketing, Vol. 2, ISSN 
1533-2667. 
Ghisi F. A. & Silva A. L., (2001) ‘The information Technology on Food Supply Chain 
Management’, IEEE International Conference PICMET 2001, Page 169, Vol. 1 
Jennings N. R., Norman T. J. & Faratin P (1998) ‘ADEPT: An Agent-based approach to 
business Process Management’, ACM SIGMOD Record 27 (4) 32-39. 
 
